Making Time Machine work with the ReadyNAS

[yoh-dah]

The step-by-step how-to can be found here.

[DavidB]

Latest issue I've found is with a laptop. When TM decides that the share isn't available (e.g. the laptop was taken off-site) it doesn't automatically restart backups when it is available.
When I bring my laptop back on-site I usually need to kick off a manual "Back Up Now" to get things happening again.

EDIT: False alarm. TM had been disabled by some other software I was working on, and stupid me hadn't noticed. Re-did the experiment today: was off at several other networks today, and on return home the backups kicked in by themselves.

But this does open up a disturbing possibility: when visiting a "foreign" network (e.g. a wifi hotspot) if someone can impersonate your networked TM share they could grab a copy of all your data. Given the steps involved in setting up and authenticating a TM share this is probably more of a theoretical than practical risk right now, but it could do with examination.
If the possibility concerns you, manually turning TM off will avoid the risk. But as seen above, you'll need to remember to turn it back on later!

[yoh-dah]

Latest issue I've found is with a laptop. When TM decides that the share isn't available (e.g. the laptop was taken off-site) it doesn't automatically restart backups when it is available.
When I bring my laptop back on-site I usually need to kick off a manual "Back Up Now" to get things happening again (it keeps up with the hourly backups after that).

Anyone with TimeCapsule to see how it behaves with that?

[brainpan]

According to this external post, when Time Machine uses a remote volume it will erroneously purge all backups when the volume fills up. Does anyone know whether this problem still exists?

[andreocean]

It appears that Apple has fixed that bug. See this post for more information: http://adamcohenrose.blogspot.com/2008/ ... undle.html

I am using Time Machine with a dedicated TM share on my ReadyNAS. I followed these instructions to set up the disk image: http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php? ... 8020121567

However, it looks like these instructions will work just as well, and they are much easier: http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php? ... 0211034137

[miketrogni]

thank you very much for the patch links - I may setup a new partition and try this now.

and thank you for linking to the simpler instructions - the Infrant ones struck me as too complicated to follow for most people... (including me!)

[andy_vdg]

Please include this in your official step by step:
In order for this to work your computer name has to be short - no spaces or fancy characters like ' " etc...
It took me a long long time to figure out this was the reason Time Machine wasn't working even though I followed the instructions to the T.
Once I changed my computer name from Andy's MacBook Pro to andy-mbp and logged out and back in again it worked like a charm.
Found the solution here: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1434341&tstart=135

Hope this saves others a headache.

[yoh-dah]

Please include this in your official step by step:
In order for this to work your computer name has to be short - no spaces or fancy characters like ' " etc...
It took me a long long time to figure out this was the reason Time Machine wasn't working even though I followed the instructions to the T.
Once I changed my computer name from Andy's MacBook Pro to andy-mbp and logged out and back in again it worked like a charm.
Found the solution here: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1434341&tstart=135

Hope this saves others a headache.

Thanks Andy. Warning has been placed.

[sphardy]

Just FYI: I have 3 macs with names that include both spaces and apostrophes - no issues with getting TM to work on any of them. Latest one was configured following the published guide step be step as a test of the document - worked fine

///P

[jarrah]

Please include this in your official step by step:
In order for this to work your computer name has to be short - no spaces or fancy characters like ' " etc...
It took me a long long time to figure out this was the reason Time Machine wasn't working even though I followed the instructions to the T.
Once I changed my computer name from Andy's MacBook Pro to andy-mbp and logged out and back in again it worked like a charm.
Found the solution here: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1434341&tstart=135

Hope this saves others a headache.

Were you connecting using AFP or CIFS? I was also able to get it to work using AFP with an apostrophe in the name.

[andy_vdg]

I tried with CIFS and AFP and it would always fail saying it couldn't mount the disk image.
My local hostname has always been andy-mbp but for some reason it only worked once I changed my computer name to that as well.
Might be more of a best practice than a must for everyone (seems to also not affect everyone in the different forum posts I found). I also found this official Apple support article: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306928

Other forum posts I've found said it might have something to do with the length of the computer name - hard to tell which one it was for me.

Once I upgrade my wife's Mac to Leopard I will try again and see if it works without changing the computer name.

[jarrah]

It's probably good practice to make the name simple, as you say.

Cheers,

Greg

[odysseus]

I've been snooping a bit, and as if following your own instructions, Time Machine does indeed create a journaled HFS+ file system -- but with a difference, since it creates a journaled HFS+ *case sensitive* file system. What are the implications of using a .sparebundle file with a presumably case-insensitive file system instead of a case-sensitive one for Time Machine? If the difference is important, how can we replicate it? Judging from the -fs specification in hdiutil, there's only HFS+J or HFSX (case-sensitive), but not HFSX+J.

[odysseus]

To be specific, I use the -fs HFS+J specification to create the .sparsebundle file and mount it, Disk Utility shows "Format: Mac OS Extended (Journaled)", but when I let Time Machine create the file, it shows "Format: MacOS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled)" Is there a difference between the two files? It would really be nice to be able to specify the maximum size!

[btaroli]

... it creates a journaled HFS+ *case sensitive* file system. What are the implications of using a .sparebundle file with a presumably case-insensitive file system instead of a case-sensitive one for Time Machine? ...

There may be implications. What this depends upon is how the filesystem of your Mac(s) is configured. If you, for example, back up a Mac with a case-sensitive filesystem to a TimeMachine volume that is case-insensitive, then this can result in situations where files with different names (file vs fiLe) overwrite each other. So, from a TimeMachine perspective it is always safer to use case-sensitive filesystems.

There have been other threads discussing this issue. Do some searching. In my case, I always use case-sensitive filesystems. It just avoids any confusion or sloppy behavior.